zimmerer - wetlands peru.pdf

Wetland Production and Smallholder

’ Abstract. This study integrates regional po- ’ litical ecology concepts via the ideas of struc-

turation, a politics of place, and production I ecology in order to examine the ecological and social relations embodied in wetland agriculture. Montane bogs were converted into fields roughly twenty years ago when peasant cultivators in Colquepata District (southern Peru) responded to a convergence of production and demand incentives. Environmental conditions, regional social and economic structures, and government policy most shaped the temporal and spatial realization of these stimuli. Both the expansion of local commerce and the capture of state agricultural subsidies depended on social relations that formed historically through ethnic and peasant resistance against landlord domination in a “region of resistance.” Flexible labor allocation required by the biological ecology of wetland fields has contributed to the persistence of production by peasant smallholders. The social practices and struggles of dominated peasants, as well as the ecology of production, etch critical temporal and spatial dimensions in the processes of agricultural change, capitalist development, and associated environmental transformations.

Key Words: regional political ecology, agricultur-

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Persistence: Agricultural Change in a Highland Peruvian Region

Karl S. Zimmerer

Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706

technology, or alterations in the sectoral artic- ulation of agriculture (reviewed in Turner and Brush 1987). Yet, rather than a single cause, all four conditions figured into the development and persistence of wetland agriculture in Colquepata District. Attempting to integrate the ecological and socioeconomic relations girding agriculture and other land use, growing numbers of geographers and other social sci- entists have situated empirical studies in rnod- els of “political ecology” (Bassett 1988; Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Hecht 1982; Lewis 1991; Schmink and Wood 1987; Sheridan 1988; Wolf 1972; see also Crossman 1984 and the review by Emel and Peet 1989). The present study further elaborates political ecology concepts to provide both an integrative account of the emergence and persistence of montane-bog agriculture and a cross-historical comparison of wetland production.’

Political ecology seeks to merge two major theoretical fields in contemporary geography, ecology and political economy. Defining i t s widest reach, Blaikie and Brookfield (1987, 17) state that “ ‘political ecology’ combines the concerns of ecology and a broadly defined polit ical economy.” Others such as Bassett (1988) likewise describe an expansive conceptual ter- rain traversing the microscale (behavioralist) approaches of human and cultural ecology (e.g., Brookfield 1972, 1984; Nietschmann 1973; De- nevan 1983) and a macroscale (structuralist) political economy (e.g., Blaikie 1985; Peet and Thrift 1989; Watts 1983). Although these political-ecological models have encompassed a range of perspectives, they have not sought to settle the contradiction between the primacy attributed to the individual in human and cultural ecology and the structuralist framework of political economy. This gap is perhaps most evident in political ecology‘s view of socioeco-

Annals of the Associafion of American Geographers, 81(3), 1991, pp. 443-463 0 Copyright 1991 by Association of American Geographers

444 Zimmerer

nomic structures solely as constraints or a pre- figured “context” for those making decisions about land use. Rather than only bounding the opportunities of decisionmakers, such structures are formed by the interaction of diverse social collectives and individuals, including the persons that choose and carry out land-use strategies. Formative social practices contributing tot the context of local land use do not occur on a neutral ground but instead take place through strategies of domination, accommo- dation, and resistance. While the cultivators of Colquepata District inarguably converted montane bogs into agricultural fields in response to structural incentives, the entire forming of such structures was not externally imposed, but instead resulted partly from the social practices of these peasant smallholders. The mutual dependence of structure and agency is expressed by the concept of “structuration,” which holds that “the structural properties of social systems are both the medium and the outcome of practices that constitute these systems” (Giddens 1979, 69; see also Bourdieu 1977; Pred 1984). By incorporating a structuration concept into political ecology, the present study attempts to link the social practices of land users to the structural conditions of peasant agriculture.

The structuration concept aids also in providing political ecology with a means of ana- lyzing the spatial form of agricultural change and environmental degradation. The importance of this dimension is not overlooked by Blaikie and Brookfield (1987) who state that:

The adjective “regional” is important because it is necessary to take account of environmental vari- ability and the spatial variations in resilience and sensitivity of the land, as different demands are put on the land through time. The word ”regional” also implies the incorporation of environmental considerations into theories of regional growth and decline (p. 17).

Due to the constant attention that cultural ecologists focus on the geographical variation of environmental conditions, “regional” in the first sense clarifies rather than extends the political ecology perspective while in the second it refers to a wide-ranging regional political economy. The framework developed below takes a step in the direction of “regionalizing” political ecology by examining how the spatially structured interaction of indigenous peasants and local elites constituted a ”politics of place”

(sensu Agnew 1987) and, more specifically, shaped a “region of resistance” where rural Quechua resisted domination by estate owners and villagers. Drawing on historically structured practices and ideology, peasant cultivators in the study region later were able to pres- sure the Peruvian state for subsidies that underwrote the transformation of montane wetlands. Examined through the framework of structuration, the geography of social power and political-economic structures can bring into view spatial patterns of resource allocation and thereby advance a regional concept in political ecology.

Physical and biological conditions of production form the ecological basis of regional political ecology. The present study details how cultivators in Colquepata District modify otherwise limiting agroecological features of montane bogs.* Despite the extensive examination of prehistoric wetland agriculture (reviewed in Turner and Denevan 1985), little research has been concerned with the biological ecology of the growing environment. Yet the prevalence of disease pathogens and insect pests so seri- ously threatens wetland production that care- ful monitoring and flexible labor inputs are found necessary to ensure its viability. In fact, the ecological requirements of wetland cultivation supplied a key cost advantage to peasant agriculturalists and thus contributed to the competitiveness of these producers in the course of widening commercialization. Persis- tence of smallholding peasants runs counter to the scenario posited by both neoclassical and (classical) Marxist theories of economic development (Schultz 1964; Lenin 1976).

Finally, the importance of production ecology and spatial scale in the wetland agriculture of peasant smallholders in Colquepata District engages an ongoing debate about prehistoric economic organization. Among Andeanist scholars, Kolata (1986) most recently has artic- ulated the assumption that wetland production was necessarily organized by centralized political authorities due to the need for coordinated water control. Kolata’s assumption of centralized political-economic organization, analogous to Wittfogel’s (1957) claim of large-scale irrigated “hydraulic agriculture” in the basins of major river valleys, predicates the use of medium or large production units in wetland sites. Yet several counter-examples to Wittfogel’s hydraulic-agriculture thesis have been enumer-

Wetland Production and Smallholder Persistence 445

ated by researchers working on irrigated agriculture in both the prehistoric Old World (Butzer 1976) and the present Peruvian Andes (Mitchell 1976). Contemporary cultivation in Colquepata District likewise reveals the "large scale" assumption as flawed. Rather than re- quiring large-scale economic and political organization, present-day wetland agriculture depends on the provisioning of labor by individual peasant households able to monitor production closely and provide labor in varying amounts and on short notice.

This paper opens by reviewing the geographical study of field systems in Andean agriculture. Next, i t assesses the ecology of current wetland production in Colquepata District. Cultivation techniques and rationales, ecological constraints, labor scheduling, and geographical scale anchor this discussion to the analysis of agricultural change. The third section examines the conditions leading to the ini- tiation, location, and persistence of wetland agriculture in Colquepata District. In the fourth section, the wetland production system of Colquepata is fitted into proposed land-use classification schema. Finally, application of the regional political ecology perspective in the case study is used to draw conclusions concerning agricultural change, wetland production, and peasant smallholder persistence.

Andean Agriculture: Background

Agriculture in the montane bogs of Colque- pata District resembles two Andean production types of much greater areal extent: prehistoric wetland agriculture and contemporary dry- farming. Each counterpart of contemporary bog agriculture encompasses a different set of production structures comprising agricultural environments, technologies, field landforms, cultivation practices, and the social organization of labor. Prior to European Conquest, these two agricultural systems were foundations in the production of food for as many as 25 million people (reviewed in Denevan 1976,2-4). Today only dry-farming supplies a substantial portion of subsistence for the large peasantry that in- habits the Andes from southern Bolivia to central Colombia (Wolf 1966; de Janvry et al. 1989). In recently converting montane bogs into fields, cultivators in Colquepata District developed an agricultural strategy based on contemporary

technologies and forms of social organization, many derived from dry-farming, while con- fronting biophysical conditions analogous to those characterizing prehistoric wetland production.

During the centuries prior to conquest by Spaniards and Portuguese, elevated planting surfaces ("raised fields") covered more than 170,000 hectares in the pre-European New World (Denevan 1970,648). In South America, geographical research has located the majority of prehistoric raised fields in two environments: riverine floodplains, especially in the lowlands, and the lacustrine plains as well as other poorly drained areas of the Andean highlands (Parsons and Denevan 1967).' Denevan (1980, 226) has estimated that raised fields ex- tended over at least 92,000 hectares of highland habitats. As remains of relict raised fields sur- faced during the 1960s and ' ~ O S , geographers designed taxonomic classifications based on the shapes and patterns of field landforms (Dene- van and Turner 1974; Mathewson 1985). The vast majority of planting surfaces were found to resemble "platforms" that measured between one and twenty or more meters in width. An "open-checkerboard'' of planting beds marked most fields, although other configu- rations such as "riverine," "irregular em- banked," "ladder," and "linear" also were widespread (Denevan 1970; Knapp 1988; Smith et al. 1968). Under massive social and political upheavals prior to the Spanish Conquest and throughout the sixteenth century, most i f not all platform field agriculture in the Andes was terminated. Despite the lack of written ac- counts, a group of geographers, archaeologists, and cultural historians has begun to interpret the social organization of prehistoric wetland production using material artifacts.

The development of wetland cultivation in the Andes has been studied most thoroughly in the high-elevation basin that surrounds Lake Titicaca (e.g., Smith et al. 7968; Erickson 1985; Kolata 1986). investigating raised fields south of the lake, Kolata (1986, 760) has concluded that "the construction, maintenance, and production of these [raised] fields were managed by a centralized political authority [the Tiwanaku state (AD 100-1000)]. . . ." While he cites arti- factual evidence that centralized political power and raised fields coincided geographically, Kolata concedes that the contemporaneity of raised-field construction and state rule is not

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I demonstrated. Although his interpretation might be proven correct, Kolata's assumption of centralized sociopolitical authority in wetland agriculture i s disputable on empirical grounds. Erickson's (1985) combined archaeological and ethnographic field research else- where in the Lake Titicaca Basin, for example, argues that prehistoric raised fields could have been cultivated under small-scale forms of social and economic control. Brief mention of a small area of historic platform-field cultivation near Bogota (Colombia) by Eidt (1959,386) sim- ilarly suggests that cultivation was carried out by peasant smallholders.

Today, most agricultural production in the Andes is organized by households of peasant smallholders. Although based on the nuclear family, households in the Andes frequently include nonkin. Less than one-half of Andean peasants belong to communities, a supra- household level of social organization whose direct involvement in production generally does not extend beyond relatively small areas of communal plots and the coordination of certain land-use types such as open field systems (Orlove and Custred 1980). The task of marshalling capital and labor for most production therefore falls on the individual household. Persisting in a "refuge sector" symptomatic of the stagnant national economies of the Andean countries, peasant households produce crops for both the market and subsistence (de Janvry et al. 1989). Through lowering consumption costs, subsistence production permits peasant farmers to continue provisioning markets even when profit margins reach nominal or even negative levels (de Janvry 1981; Reinhardt 1988). While smallholder households in the Andes increasingly articulate with extra-household economies through temporary labor migration as well as commercial farming, their agricultural production retains the high labor and low capital attributes of the peasant economy.

To cultivate upland sites, most present-day Andean agriculturalists utilize a form of raised field that diverges substantially from the platforms constructed by prehistoric wetland cultivators. Classified as a ridged field (Denevan and Turner 1974,25), it i s comprised of narrow, cambered beds.* Frequently designated "lazy beds,'' a term originally applied to the planting surfaces of abandoned fields in Celtic portions of the British Isles (Evans 1973; West 1959,282), the elevated portions of contemporary ridged

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parcels are labeled most precisely by the Quechua term wachu(Gade 1975; Knapp 1988). Cultivated by the majority of Andean peasant farmers, wachu fields yield crops of potatoes as well as the secondary Andean tubers (aiiu, oca, olluco; see Sauer 1950) that are either con- sumed by producer households or marketed.

Wetland Agricultural Production

On mid-slopes at intermediate elevations (3500-3900 m) in Colquepata District (see Fig. I), the ridged field (wachu)agriculture that pre- dominates in surrounding regions i s replaced with a wetland field type containing a complex drainage network. Highly distinct drained-wachu fields are found in an approximately 85-km2 area centered on the village of Colquepata (1981 population 425). In more than a dozen nearby communities inhabited by roughly 3000 Quechua-speaking peasants, drained-wachu agriculture is a major economic activity uniting distinct biophysical environments and the production structures organized by peasant households. Local ecological and social resources, including agricultural knowledge, complement external forces in favoring drained-wachu agriculture.

The layout of drained-wachu fields (see Figs. 2 and 3) resembles neither its prehistoric nor contemporary counterparts. intended to meet the opposing objectives of both subirrigation and drainage, fields contain an elaborate network of canals absent from the standard ridged- field design that abounds in adjacent upland areas. While standard ridged fields facilitate drainage by orienting beds and alleys parallel to the slope (West 1959,281; Parsons and De- nevan 1967,98), the highly engineered drained- wachu fields of Colquepata District connect primary, secondary, and even tertiary drainage canals into a modified herringbone pattern. The distinct pattern of canals and the narrowness of planting beds (.3-.5 m) not only differ from prehistoric platform fields but also reflect con- trasting physical conditions of the wetland environment supporting each agricultural system.

Rather than occupying lakeshore plains or broad basins, drained-wachu fields occur in the northern portion of a rolling badlands land- scape that stretches at least 80 km south of Colquepata(Fig. 1). Underlain by phyllite (mud- stone similar to slate), intermediate-elevation


Figure 1. Wetland agriculture in Colquepata District (southern Peruvian highlands).

slopes in the area contain low-lying depressions or swales interspersed with concave rock surfaces and sometimes inclined as steeply as 15". Although swales rarely cover more than 500 m2, they usually contain soil deposits of one or more meters. The accumulation of run-off from surrounding slopes saturates swale sites, which, if left uncultivated, support a montane bog veg- etation of mat-forming herb^.^ Thus, although the size and topography of swales differ significantly from that of lacustrine plains where prehistoric Andean cultivators practiced raised- field agriculture, t he two habitat types share

the key commonality of waterlogged soils. Like t he platform design of prehistoric fields, the distinctive layout of drained-wacbu fields is well- suited t o the hydrologic conditions shaped by regional topography.

Peasant agriculturalists cultivating drained- wacbu fields channel considerable labor through a large number of tasks t o produce potatoes, the main wetland crop. In addition to the ten field tasks typical of standard ridged fields, drained-wachu production requires a mini- mum of four extra field tasks (including sup- plementary weeding, pulverizing, and agro-

448 Zimmerer

Figure 2. Drained-wachu field occupying a wetland swale at 3780 meters in Colquepata District.

chemical applications, and the construction, scooping, and grading of canals) and approximately 20-35 percent more labor Con- trast in the need for labor arises principally from

mounding, which in a drained-wachu field claims nearly twice the work time of an equal- size ridged plot (149 person-daydhectare ver- sus 78 pers~n-days/hectare).~ The importance


Primary canal

Lateral canal

Tertiary canal

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Figure 3. The design of canals draining the field shown in Figure 2.

to drained-wachu producers of major labor inputs at several stages during the growing season is equaled by the need to schedule these and other less-demanding agricultural tasks in response to highly variable ecological conditions.

Ecologically, drained-wachu fields are marked by the unpredictable occurrence of potentially damaging field conditions. Saturated soils, for example, require not only the excavation of the herringbone canal network, but also the sub- sequent modification of drainage surfaces at periodic intervals. T o initiate the canal system, cultivators first dig shallow secondary (lateral) canals, later connecting them to primary canals that run parallel to the slope (Figs. 2 and 3). They then plow additional secondary canals in portions of the field that require further drainage. In preparation for planting potatoes, the Andean "foot-plow" (a foot-driven hoe) is used

to construct elevated beds that typically stand .4 to .8 m above the uncultivated surface, although they sometimes reach a height of 1.0 m and thus tower 2.0 m or more above the bottom of the excavated canal (Allen 1988,39). Nearly three weeks after planting, cultivators complete a major grading and scooping of canal surfaces (see Fig. 4), tasks that are repeated at a reduced scale later in the growing season.

Several biophysical hazards in addition to ex- cess soil moisture also endanger drained-wachu plantings. Weed growth plagues cultivation throughout the growing season and requires the intermittent allocation of household labor. Insects and pathogens, which abound due to the year-round humid conditions in drained- wachu sites, also infirm the wetland crop.8 The magnitude of these problems is exacerbated by the production calendar of most drained-wa-

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Figure 4. this task also reduces the risk of frost and hail damage.

Cultivator scooping soil to aid in grading the canalsof a wetland field. By covering emergent seedlings,

chu fields. Planted during the middle (July-Au- gust) of the approximately six-month dry season, drained-wachu fields are not harvested until either January or February. Heavy rains late in the growing season add to field humidity and stimulate pest and pathogen outbreaks, which, if untreated, cause considerable crop damage during the crucial period shortly before harvest.

Much work in monitoring and alleviating potential threats to production, such as weed competition and insect predation, is carried out by the women and the older children of smallholder households. To limit crop losses during the end of the growing season, for example, the close scrutiny of field conditions and the flexible allocation of household labor are frequently used to advance harvest by several days or even a few weeks. Regular monitoring also is necessary for the effective utilization of numerous agrochemicals in drained-wachu production. Cultivators apply an array of insecti-

cides, fungicides, and fertilizer in response to short-term plant stress, disease, and infestation. Exclusive reliance on scientifically bred (“improved”) varieties of potatoes, which possess poor below-ground storage capacity and are susceptible to harvest-period loss from pests and pathogens, further magnifies labor demands and their temporal uncertainty in drained-wachu fields.

In summary, peasant smallholders in Colque- pata District produce potatoes in wetland sites at intermediate elevations by using a well-defined combination of production structures (agricultural environments, technologies, field landforms, cultivation practices, and the social organization of labor). The environmental hazards of wetland sites-poor drainage, weeds, disease, and pests-exhibit extreme spatial and temporal variation. Unless modified, biophysical threats jeopardize drained-wachu production. Successful production therefore depends on the vigilant monitoring of field sites and the


capacity of agricultural households to allocate labor for ameliorating field conditions and reducing risk on short notice. Tasks such as subirrigating, draining, mounding, weeding, and applying pesticides and fungicides are undertaken primarily by household members, including women and older children. Smallhold- er management of the close links among production structures in drained-wacbu agriculture did not arise in vacuo but rather developed historically within a specific context of environment and regional society.

Regional Agricultural Change

As late as 1965, the intermediate-elevation montane bogs of Colquepata District remained uncultivated. Diverse crops and small herds ac- counted for the subsistence production of households in the district while, since the opening in 1931 of a roadway from Cuzco (the departmental capital) to the provincial capital of Paucartambo (Fig. l), agriculturalists also had sold increasing amounts of potatoes to buyers who furnished Cuzco’s urban market (Villa- sante Ortiz 1975, 52). Peasant households also marketed sheep, camelids (llamas and alpacas), and cattle, which, like potatoes, were mostly bought by either wholesalers in Cuzco or itin- erant merchants in Colquepata. Despite a moderate level of commercialization, the pre-1965 economy of Colquepata District did not pres- age the more dynamic commerce that would emerge with wetland agriculture.

The location of drained-wacbu production in Colquepata District during the late 1960s and ’70s depended on the response of local agriculturalists to a fusion of favorable conditions. Intermediate-elevation bog habitats, the exist- ing constellation of household economic ac- tivities, transportation costs, demographic growth, and population density favored the development of drained-wachu agriculture. Ex- amining the spatial patterning of such factors, however, reveals that they occurred in nearby regions as well as the drained-wachu area of Colquepata District:

(1) The distribution of intermediate-elevation bogs, coterminus with the zone of phyllite outcrop, extends well beyond the core of wetland production (Fig. 1; also Institute for Applied Geo- sciences 1984).

(2) The local agropastoral economy was similar to

that of peasant households and communities throughout the zone of phyllite outcrop.

(3) Roads to Cuzco providing transportation access and shaping shipping costs pass through areas between Urcos and Ocongate (Ccatca District) that also contain intermediate-elevation bogs, but where wetland production i s minimal or non-existent (Fig. 1).

(4) Population growth rates (1961-81) in Colque- pata District (1.3 percendyr.) were lower and hence less favorable for agricultural intensification and the development of wetland production than those in nearby areas such as Ccat- ca District (1.7 percendyr.) where the agricultural conversion of wetlands did not occur (DireccMn Nacional de Estadistica y Censos 1966; lnstituto Nacional de Estadistica 1983).

(5) The density of population and mean holdings of land per person in Colquepata District (33.9 persons/km2 and 2.94 hectaredperson) were less conducive for agricultural change than conditions in nearby areas, such as Ccatca Dis- trict (41.0 persons/km2 and 2.44 hectaredperson), where wetlands were not converted (Di- recci6n Nacional de Estadistica y Censos, 1966).

Thus, the above elements, prominent in environmental and demographic models of agricultural change (reviewed in Brush 1987), served as necessary but not sufficient inducers of development, The key differentiator to which the peasant smallholders of Colquepata District responded in developing wetland cultivation was a pair of regional economic structures providing demand and production incentives. Rather than being imposed on peasant households by an externally determined political economy, the local constitution of these structural stimuli was shaped critically by the ethnic struggles waged by the past and present inhabitants of Colquepata District.

Colquepata: A Region of Resistance

In 1565, a tax record listed the colquepata among the tribute payers in the province of “Los Andes“ (Paucartambo’s sixteenth century apellation). Analogous to dozens of diverse An- dean cultural groups, colquepata people of the early colonial period shared a readily recog- nizable ethnic identity and cohesive territory. Under the late sixteenth-century reforms of Spanish Viceroy Toledo, the regional population was forced to resettle in the newly found- ed village of Colquepata. In Colquepata, as well as other mandated settlements in the highlands of southern Peru, forced relocation magnified the crises of declining food production and population collapse (Allen 1988; Cade and Es-

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cobar 1982). Although most nucleated settlements later attracted nonindigenous villagers (mistis or mestizos), many of whom became local elites, few if any of this group populated the village of Colq~epata.~ The combination of badlands topography and inhabitants’ land claims based on descent from prestigious Inca clans deterred outside ownership and com- menced the social construction of the Colque- pata countryside as a “region of refuge” where Andean natives (runa) resisted control by land- owners.’O The conspicuous free communities (ayllus) and mostly indigenous population, along with the near-absence of nonindigenous elites, demarcated a division of social and economic power in Colquepata that differed notably from neighboring regions dominated by manorial estates (haciendas).

Land and labor conflicts between free communities and surrounding estates multiplied in certain regions of highland Peru following the transfer of communal property rights to individual Indians under the post-independence laws ratified by Simon Bolivar in 1825. In Cuzco and Peru’s southern highlands, however, the weakening of trade ties to the mines of Bolivia initiated a decline in the regional economy, thus limiting outside pressures on the resources of indigenous communities. Most communities in Colquepata successfully resisted territorial usurpation so that, two decades after the Bolivar decree, native communities s t i l l outnumbered estates by two to one in the region (then a repartimiento) whereas estates predominated by factors of 6.5 and 5.0 in nearby Paucartambo and Challambamba, respec- tively. Following the national government’s es- tablishment of the District of Colquepata in 1857, native communities maintained their de facto territorial independence until, in 1926, the government of Peru conceded to powerful urban liberals and began recognizing official “I n digenou s Corn mu n i t ies” (Comunidades In- digenas). Most communities in Colquepata Dis- trict, including those in the core of contemporary wetland agriculture, received land titles within two years. Legal titling by the Peruvian state permitted members of Indigenous Com- munities to control territory through a usufruct arrangement forbidding the negotiation of land as private property.

Despite the official recognition of Indige- nous Communities, peasant inhabitants of Colquepata District were forced to resist ex-

ternal social and economic domination in order to maintain local control of land and labor. Due to the state’s contradictory objectives and its general weakness in Andean regions such as Colquepata District, the entitling of communities did little to protect indigenous land and labor from local elites while, concurrently, the desirability of these resources was enhanced by completion of the Cuzco-Paucartambo road and the ensuing economic growth of provincial estates. In defense, rural inhabitants drew on a wide range of tactics to block, deflect, and de- fuse the efforts of estate owners and villagers. Although violent conflicts periodically erupt- ed, peasants in Colquepata District primarily drew on “everyday forms of resistance” (Scott 1985; Watts 1989), such as feigned obsequi- ousness and evasion. In addition, they persis- tently pursued official means of protest, filing a web of judicial charges that eventually en- meshed most of the village elite, privately held estates, and nearly all Indigenous Communities (see Fig. 5). When Peru’s newly installed “Rev- olutionary Government of the Armed Forces” appropriated highland estates in 1969, land tenure in Colquepata District was scarcely altered. Local forms of new state policies, however, presented cultivators with incipient conditions that, when combined with changes in agricultural market structures and the advent of Green Revolution-type potato technology during the 1 9 6 0 ~ ~ stimulated the agricultural conversion of montane bogs.

Agricultural Markets

Export-led growth and import-substitution industrialization during the 1940s and ‘50s fu- eled the expansion of Peru’s internal markets and exerted a forceful “pull” on peasants in the economically stagnant highlands. More than a million rural highlanders had migrated to urban centers by 1960 (Thorp and Bertram 1978). Dur- ing the following decade, overvalued national currency and international borrowing en- trained yet greater urban growth, leading to further deepening of internal markets, including those for staple foods. Although most mi- grants were destined to coastal urban centers, highland cities also swelled. The departmental capital of Cuzco, a city of 80,000 in 1961, sur- passed 200,000 by 1981 (Censo Nacional 1961, 1981). The elevation of food prices, along with


Boundary disputes

Conflicts over labor Provincial and district capitals

0 Independent community (ay//u) A Estate (hacienda)

- - - Community and estate bounda - Roads

Figure 5. Conflicts between estates, villagers, and communities in Colquepata District (1920-69).

the stabilization of production costs, reversed a steady twenty-year decline in the terms of trade for the agricultural sector starting in 1969 (Thorp and Bertram 1978,278). During the first half of the 1970s, wholesale food prices con-

tinued to accelerate more rapidly than production costs.

The generally favorable climate of staple food markets.” In the late 1960s, the seasonal fluc- discordance of seasonal supply and uniform de-

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Table 1. The Seasonal Variation of Retail Potato Prices” in Cuzco

I F M A M I J A S 0 N D

1.8 1.7 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 * Monthly per kilogram price; 1.0 = 396 soles (January 1984) = $US. .20. Source: Agrarian Reform Archive, 1985.

mand. Resulting price variation was especially pronounced in perishable crops such as potatoes. Moreover, the magnitude of fluctuation was greater in highland than in coastal potato markets.” In the late 1960s, the seasonal fluctuation of retail potato prices exceeded 100 percent,; as late as 1984, after more than a decade of gains in off-season production, prices s t i l l varied by about 70 percent (see Table 1). Wholesale prices, which tracked the seasonal swings of retail costs, offered potato growers a strong incentive to devise off -season systems of potato agriculture.

In the early 1960s, seasonal price fluctuations in the burgeoning food market of urban Cuzco motivated agriculturalists outside of Calca in the Urubamba Valley to enlarge off-season potato production (Ortega 1987). Located less than 30 km from the departmental capital and con- nected by a major road (Fig. I), the temperate and well-watered bottomlands of the Urubam- ba depression provided irrigated fields well- suited to dry-season (or “early planting“) production (Gade 1975,212). Prior to this com- mercialisation, Urubamba agriculturalists had cultivated two crops of dry-season potatoes, both of which supplied subsistence needs during the several-month period before harvest of the main rainfed planting. The first producers of the calmmercial dry-season planting adopted techniques and technologies that had formerly met the ineeds of household consumption. Fast- maturing native cultivars of the species Solanurn phureja(one of the eight cultivated Andean potato species) were a key component of the ear- liest dry-season production for commercial purposes. Responding only slightly to fertilizer amendments, the moderate yield of native cultivars constrained the capacity of commercial growers to compete in the Cuzco market.

To further increase dry-season production, cultivators in the Urubamba Valley adopted several Green Revolution-type technologies for potato cultivation. Developed by Peru’s national potato program, the country’s leading agricultural university, and the International Potato Center in Lima, the introduced tech-

nologies included fertilizer, pesticides, and insecticides. The core components were high- yielding varieties that responded to applications of chemical fertilizers with greater yield increases than native potatoes.lz Although slower to mature than some native cultivars, scientifically bred varieties nonetheless yielded a crop rapidly (5-6 months at 3500 m). Both fast maturation and genetic resistance strength- ened the capacity of improved varieties to weather disease infestations, a critical asset in the irrigated environments necessary for dry- season cultivation. (By 1970, native 5. phureja potatoes had become rare in the Urubamba Valley.) Despite the availability of similar technological elements in nearby Colquepata Dis- trict, the majority of cultivators there did not initiate early-planting production until nearly a decade later than their Urubamba Valley counterparts. The inception of wetland agriculture required more than the introduction of technological innovations.

Agricultural Change

Drained-wachu production in the intermediate-elevation bogs of Colquepata District was spurred by the stimulus transmitted through both market conditions and state subsidies. The regional convergence of structural incentives contravenes depictions of government policy and market structures as having so completely disadvantaged development that agricultural change was thwarted in highland Peru during the late 1960s and the 1970s (eg, Thorp and Bertram 1978). Based on considerations of spatially aggregated economic indicators and distance-related costs such as transportation, macroscale analyses admittedly signal differ- ences in the economic structures of large areas. The rise of wetland production in Colquepata District, however, illustrates a meso-level of spatial complexity in the economic otganiza- tion of agriculture. To account for agricultural change at a local scale, the regional political ecology perspective formulated earlier i s used


to reveal how the historically structured social practices of indigenous peasants in an Andean region of resistance shaped the spatially uneven realization of state policy and markets.

Notwithstanding rampant rhetorical support for the country’s peasant smallholders, the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forc- es (1968-75) under General Juan Velasco Al- varado maintained the strongly skewed “urban bias” of previous development policies in Peru. Within the disadvantaged agricultural sector, export-oriented enterprises in coastal valleys received a disproportionate share of benefits (Thorp and Bertram 1978). Nevertheless, be- ginning in 1969, government institutions en- larged some programs-such as technical ad- vice, state-sponsored distribution and subsidies of inputs, and agricultural credit-aimed at peasant smallholders. But these programs reached only a small percentage of cultivators. Their insufficient benefits were neither distrib- uted evenly (socially or geographically) nor dictated solely by urban-bound bureaucrats as has been assumed (Thorp and Bertram 1978, 307). Far from acting as passive recipients of structural biases, the inhabitants of Colquepata Dis- trict directly and indirectly pressured local and regional authorities in order to garner a share of meager state resources. In particular, the leaders of SINAMOS (National System for Social Mobilization), an agency instituted by the Rev- olutionary Government of the Armed Forces to foster pro-state ideology among peasants and the urban poor, held views of rural society in concordance with the anti-estate political be- liefs and social practices of Colquepata inhabitants.

Despite the small size of Colquepata relative to other Paucartambo villages, SINAMOS officials installed their largest post in the “peasant town,” as elites in nearby villages referred to it. SINAMOS representatives, comprised main- ly of personnel relocated from urban centers outside the province, were notoriously inef- fective, corrupt, and frequently abusive. Nev- ertheless, agriculturalists in Colquepata District applied their skills in managing social relations with non-Quechua to deal effectively with the newly arrived government bureaucrats. More- over, they formed a peasant federation (La Liga Agraria Miguel Quispe, named after a prominent Colquepata leader of the early twentieth century) and elected officials to represent the interests of the predominantly rural populace.

From 1968-74, SINAMOS officials guaranteed loans from the national agricultural bank for peasant smallholders, thus obtaining credit for local cultivators who otherwise would not qualify. Together with peasant leaders, they per- suaded government officials to locate a distri- butorship of the state-owned fertilizer industry (ENCI, National Company for the Commercial- ization of Inputs) in the village of Colquepata. In effect, the peasant cultivators of Colquepata District managed to capture scarce production subsidies. Although awash in neither credit nor fertilizer, they managed to channel their new- found inputs into reclaiming montane bogs whose primary usefulness-pasturing livestock during the dry season-was deteriorating in any case due to infestation by a zooparasite (see Note 8).

During the late 1960s, dozens of peasant households in Colquepata District drained bog sites and mounded the fertile muck into ridges for agricultural use. To establish a wetland production system, they adopted familiar techniques and hand tools while also introducing manufactured technologies. At first, cultivators dug a design of parallel beds and alleys similar to the standard ridged-field system common in upland areas of the district. Fields cultivated in this pattern were overwhelmed by disease in- fection and pest predation due to poor drainage. Cultivators soon transplanted techniques and layouts from isolated drained-wachu fields found in nearby portions of the Cordillera Vil- canota (Fig. 1) to the bog-containing swales in the zone of phyllite By borrowing a field design from high-elevation sites and in- fusing it with sufficient labor and capital inputs, households cultivating the new agricultural system could count on substantial yields ready for harvest near the height of cyclical price fluctuation.

Within a few years of initiating cultivation, households had commercialized wetland fields to a greater extent than their other agricultural systems, and income from drained-wachu parcels formed a substantial flow in the small but growing monetary circuits of household economies. Pushed by a growing demand for con- sumer goods (radios, bicycles), continued population growth, and the decline of production in other field systems, the reliance of households on commercialized wetland production increased rapidly. To intensify production, cultivators simplified rotation schedules and re-

456 Zimmerer

duced fallow periods. Continued cropping de- pleted soil fertility and triggered a build-up of agricultural pest and disease loads. In response, the currently widespread four-year rotation of

I

potatoes-potatoes-oats-fallow was adopted by most cultivators. Nonetheless, drained-wachu production soon demanded even greater inputs of pesticides, insecticides, and fertilizer.

I


Furthermore, fungal and bacterial blights made harvested tubers unsuitable for seed and forced cultivators without separate seed-producing plots to exchange for or purchase seed tubers. The amassing need for chemical amendments and potato seed barely braked the momentum of wetland agriculture. Provisioned with sufficient and inexpensive labor by i ts members, along with subsidized credit and agricultural inputs supplied by government institutions, most households were able to initiate and continue drained-wachu production.

While households in Colquepata District expanded commercial production of dry-season potatoes during the 1970s, so too did producers in neighboring regions of Paucartambo Province. Rather than rely on intermediate-elevation bogs, other cultivators of the dry-season crop utilized irrigated fields, floodplain sites, and cloud-forest habitats that collected substantial fog drip (see Fig. 6). The continued viability of commercialization in each region depended on economic advantages visa vis other producers. The competitiveness of dry-season production in Colquepata District benefited from both social and spatial-scale factors. So- cially, a crucial advantage originated in the mi- nor extent of clientage relations both among rural agriculturalists and between these cultivators and villagers, a feature distinguishing Colquepata District from nearby regions due to the former’s history of free communities and Quechua peasant resistance. As a result, Colquepata commerce was relatively unen- cumbered by socially powerful and economically restrictive nonindigenous elites (Fonseca and Mayer 1988).14 Moreover, following the ouster of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces in 1975, enterprising cultivators in Colquepata District continued to gain dis- proportionately from subsidies provided by the state (most recently, bank loans under Presi- dent Alan Garcia’s Trapecio Andino program [1983-861) and international aid agencies. Three of the latter (Canada, the Netherlands, the Eu- ropean Economic Community), attracted at least in part by the lesser extent of socioeconomi- cally oppressive clientage, were operating in Colquepata District by the mid-1980s while equally needy districts to the east did not ben- efit from a single comparable program.

The small size of drained-wachu fields favored cultivators in Colquepata District due to the agroecological and related labor require-

ments of wetland agriculture. Following Brew- ster’s (1950) argument for ”technical cost advantages“ accruing from temporal and spatial constraints on increased capitalization and farm size in agriculture, three properties of dry-season production differentially aided the competitiveness of Colquepata agriculturalists. First, the near-equality and small extent of land holdings in Colquepata District helped assure drained-wachu producers a ready supply of labor for tasks demanding several workers (mounding, planting, harvest). In contrast, land- rich producers such as those in the lower (northern) Mapacho Valley (Fig. 6) struggled to recruit labor following the 1969 Agrarian Re- form and often paid a higher daily wage than in Colquepata District. Secondly, the small area of drained-wachu fields (50-300 m2) permitted individual households to monitor crops eff ec- tively and modify the growing environment with little difficulty. Finally, drained-wachu producers in Colquepata District were also favored differentially by the high risk of crop failure in dry-season production resulting from physical (frost, drought, and hail) and biological (pests, disease) hazards. Combining several income sources, the diversified household-economic strategies of Colquepata smallholders retained a greater flexibility in production strategies and more capacity for risk-taking than those of spe- cialized dry-season producers in other ~egi0ns.l~ In summary, prominent ecological attributes of wetland agriculture complement the smallholder form of social organization and thereby contribute to the continued economic viability of dry-season farming in Colquepata District. Ecological and social features underlying changes in the agriculture of Colquepata Dis- trict can also be viewed in light of geographical schemata for classifying the modification of land use in peasant societies.

Land-Use Change

Doolittle (1984, 124-125) has proposed a ty- pology of land-use change in nonmechanized agriculture that distinguishes between “systematic” and “incremental“ modifications. Sys- tematic alterations entail the “periodic addition of [newly constructed] individual fields and associated features such as terraces and canals” whereas incremental changes involve “new fields and associated features [that] are not

458 Zimmerer

swiftly changed to a final form but are trans- formed while in use." Although Doolittle emphasizes the areal importance of incremental land-use change, other reviews highlight the prevalence of systematic modifications in the agriculture of peasant and indigenous farmers (e.g., Denevan 1983, 404). The drained-wachu field system of Colquepata District evinces systematic land-use modification. It also demonstrates that the scheduling and amount of labor contrasts systematic change (immediate alter- ationdhigh labor requirements) with incremental modification (gradual change/low labor inputs). Furthermore, the wetland agriculture of Colquepata, which would qualify as small- scale by most metrics, highlights the salience of field size. To consider only the temporal and spatial dimensions of land-use change, however, would be remiss in not addressing the social organization of such modifications.

Land-use change in nonmechanized agriculture needs to assess the sociospatial structures of power through which cultivators organize production and modify environments. This feature defies simple description. In establishing the drained-wachu fields of Colquepata Dis- trict, smallholder households stand out as the primary units responsible for marshalling labor, land, and other resources. Yet households only account for proximate social organization, i.e., the social group most directly managing land use. The agricultural conversion of montane bogs linked several spatial scales of social and economic power, extending from the international political economy through the state and i ts institutions to power relations within households. Claims that smallholder households in Colquepata District were able to make on the local representatives of international and state institutions, as well as the labor of their members, were crucial for developing drained- wachu production and, to a large extent, pre- figure its future.

Finally, examination of the recent emergence and production of drained-wachu fields demonstrates that spatial patterns of agricultural change interconnect to other elements in the production strategies of smallholder households via the demand for labor, land, and capital. In most peasant agricultural systems, these links lead the changes in single fields to re- bound through the multiple parcels cultivated by a household (Mayer 1985). Although peasant smallholders in Colquepata District did not

cease cultivating several dispersed fields be- longing to various production systems as they undertook the agricultural "colonization" of wetland sites, they were forced to adjust household economic strategies and production practices. Maize cultivation, for instance, was abandoned at this time by many smallholders because of the conflict between the scheduling of its labor requirements and those of drained-wachu fields. In this case, land-use change located far from wetland parcels resulted from amplifying the already constraining seasonal shortage of labor within households.

Conclusion

Regional political ecology attempts to integrate the multiple social and ecological relations embodied in the organization of agriculture and land use. Applied to the recent conversion and continued cultivation of montane-bog habitats in the Colquepata District of Peru's southern highlands, this approach indi- cates that wetland production developed when smallholder households of Quechua peasants responded to a convergence of favorable production and demand conditions during the late 1960s-70s. Counted among coincident changes were the decreased opportunity costs of alter- native land use (capacity for livestock production), expanded market demand (potato prices, seasonal price fluctuation) and increased production stimuli (agricultural credit, fertilizer). Rather than viewing these structural modifications as mere contexts within which actors arrived at decisions, a reformulated and more integrated regional political-ecology perspective has been used to examine how altered conditions of production relate to the social practices of local cultivators and land users.

Modeling a regional political ecology perspective on the interplay of social practices (agency) and political-economic conditions (structure), the analysis of agricultural change in Colquepata District demonstrates that the struggles of indigenous peasants shaped not only a "politics of place," but also the temporal and spatial contours of drained-wachu development. Following centuries of refuge from and resistance against dominant landlords and villagers, rural inhabitants in the region commercialized agriculture little fettered by feudalistic


clientage with village elites. At the same time, land-centered and place-specific peasant ideology led to the region’s disproportionate capture of scarce pro-peasant agricultural subsidies under Peru’s Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces. Spurred by the combination of historically and regionally contingent incentives, Colquepata inhabitants drew on stocks of local agricultural and environmental knowledge to carve out a highly distinct form of wetland agriculture.

The development and persistence of drained- wachu cultivation by peasant smallholders in Colquepata District attests to close ties woven among wetland field environments, spatial scale, and the social organization of agricultural production. Prominent agroecological traits (wa- terlogging, weed infestation, plant pathogens, insect pests) favor the flexible scheduling of field tasks and therefore provide a technical cost advantage to smallholder households. The ecological and spatial rationales favoring smallholders challenge the assumption that direct state-level intervention is necessary for food production in wetland habitats (pace Kolata 1986). Moreover, the expansion rather than the disappearance of smallholder production that accompanied the economic growth of wetland agriculture in Colquepata District contravenes expectations that, through agricultural change, the majority of smallholders will be converted to capitalist farmers (Schultz 1964) or proletar- ians (Lenin 1976). Rather than representing a unique configuration, the combination of technical cost advantages, peasant claims on state institutions and international agencies, and the exploitation of household labor below the level of market wages complements national economic stagnation in contributing to the persistence of peasant smallholders in Latin America and other Third World regions (de Janvry et al. 1989; Reinhardt 1988).

Reformulated concepts in regional political ecology contribute to a multifaceted debate concerning the design and implementation of rural development policy in economically underdeveloped countries. Rather than emerging exclusively from a topdown process dictated by government officials or aid agencies, development planning is increasingly recognized to necessitate the involvement of local inhabitants (Friedmann 1987). The diverse groups of Colquepata inhabitants (e.g., households, small informal groups, the peasant federation) that

collectively sought to obtain state resources for development comprised one of a growing number of ”social movements” in Latin Amer- ica and other world regions, both economically developed and underdeveloped (e.g., Slater 1985). Consisting of social aggregations that seek to change the relations of power in areas such as production, science, and ethics, such movements are often characterized by democratic and local-scale forms of organization. Several of the potential advantages afforded by the incorporation of social movements into rural development planning are illustrated by both the “regional” and “political-ecological“ emphases of the present study.

Participation of rural social movements (or “grassroots” groups) can strengthen the democratic planning of regional development, thereby making more effective use of local resources (Slater 1985). As demonstrated in the present study, most Colquepata inhabitants were able to develop wetland agriculture by marshalling the triad of land, labor, and capital while also mastering the skills and knowledge necessary for successful production. Aid agencies and government planners in financially strapped underdeveloped economies such as Peru would have been hard pressed to identify the window of economic opportunity presented by drained-wachu agriculture. In effect, rural social movements can expand the level of both spatial (and ecological) disaggregation and democratic decision-making employed in the formation of development strategies. Notwith- standing the advantages afforded to regional economic planning by the participation of local inhabitants, their social and economic better- ment will continue to depend also on the political-economy base of regional political ecology (Watts 1989).

The window of economic opportunity opened by wetland agriculture in Colquepata District is propped up precariously as a result of political-economic disadvantages afflicting agriculture in highland Peru. Short-term suc- cess and the local accumulation of wealth are threatened most directly by the likely decrease of off-season potato prices as well as the pos- sible reduction of production subsidies. Ema- nating from political and economic crises of the Peruvian state, dissolution of the primary stimuli that induced wetland agriculture would probably prompt i t s demise. The constraints on development in Colquepata District echo con-

460 Zimmerer

ditions besetting rural regions in many crisis- ridden and economically underdeveloped countries (e.g., Watts 1983). Successful development based on regionally specific land-use strategies, whether planned or unplanned, will not only depend on the involvement of rural social movements at the local level but also on their effectiveness in promoting a favorable alignment of national markets and government policies.

Acknowledgments

Fieldwork for this study was undertaken with the support of the Fulbright Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Joint Committee on Lat- in American Studies of the Social Science Research Council and American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foun- dation. The initial research (March-June 1986) was undertaken while I was employed as field supervisor for the "Changes in Andean Agriculture" project of Stephen B. Brush and Enrique Mayer. I gratefully ac- knowledge the cooperation of project members, especially Leonidas Concha and the preceding Field Supervisor, CCsar Fonseca Martel. In addition, I would like to thank Enrique Mayer for pointing out the importance of seasonal price fluctuations in stimu- lating changes in highland potato agriculture. This paper originated as a presentation to the "Historical Approaches in Cultural Ecology" Symposium at the 1989 AAG Meetings. W. M. Denevan, M. W. Lewis, K. Mathewson, M. S. Meade, B. L. Turner II, and two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments and suggestions. Responsibility, of course, rests with the author.

Notes

I. Research for the present study was undertaken while the author resided in the province of Pau- cartambo, which includes Colquepata District, from March 1986 until August 1987. Interviews and oral histories involving 60 cultivators and villagers complemented participant-observer eth- nography. Ecological methodologies included the mapping of 75 fields, random sampling of 20 field sites for soils analysis, and the collection of tubers. Identifications of insects, bacteria, fungi, and disease were made at the Center for the Inves- tigation of Andean Crops (CICA, Centro para la Investigacih de Cultivos Andinos) in Cuzco and the International Potato Center (CIP, Centro In- ternacionalde la Papa) in Lima. Ing. Ramiro Ortega Duetias and Dr. Maria Mayer de Scurrah were especially helpful in making identifications. Ar- chival materials were consulted in Cuzco's Agrar- ian Reform Archives (Archivo de la Reforma Agra- ria), the Cuzco Departmental Archive (Archivo

Departmental del Cuzco), and the archive of the Archbishop of Cuzco (Archivo del Archobispado del Cuzco).

2. Bogs are usually considered to be a type of wetland. Cowardin et a1.(1979,3),for instance, define wetlands as "lands where saturation with water is the dominant factor determining the nature of soil development and the types of plant and an- imal communities living in the soil and on i ts surface" (see also Martin et al. 1953). Geogra- phers writing on the agricultural use of wetlands (or wet 1and)also have used the term in reference to those areas characterized by waterlogged soils (including bogs) (Denevan 1970; Knapp and De- nevan 1985; Turner and Denevan 1985). It should be noted that the definition of wetlands held by some biological ecologists does not include bogs (e.g., Lincoln et al. 1982).

3. In addition to riverine floodplains such as the San Jorge of Colombia (Parsons and Bowen 1966) and Ecuador's Rio Cuayas Valley (Parsons 1969), raised- field cultivation in lowland South America covered extensive areas of interior savannas, including Bolivia's Llanos de Mojos (Denevan 1966)and the Llanos de Orinoco of Venezuela (Denevan and Zucchi 1978).

4. Extant ridged fields in the Andes consist of narrow (.3-.5 m), parallel ridges separated by slightly wider intervening alleys (.4-.€I m). Their "wave- length,'' or distance from ridge-top to ridge-top, ranges from .8 to 1.0 m. The height, or "ampli- tude," of ridges varies between .3 and .6 m (De- nevan 1970,651).

5. The texture and fertility of swale soils is well- suited to agriculture. Although upper layers of the soil contain a high content of organic matter (7-10 percent), this level decreases rapidly once plowing and cultivation are initiated. The signif- icant acidity (pH 3.5-4.8) of swale sites does not impair acidophilous plant species such as cultivated potatoes.

6. The major tasks used to cultivate standard ridged fields include the following: plowing, leveling and pulverization of planting beds, planting, first mounding, second mounding, fertilization, application of insecticide, application of fungicide, weeding, and harvest.

7. The figure for ridged fields is from Erickson (1985). The mounding of prehistoric platform fields pre- sumably required considerably more labor than the drained-wachu parcels of Colquepata District (Erickson 1985). Platforms, however, probably were not mounded anew each year, suggesting that the average annual demand for tillage (and perhaps other tasks) in these fields might have been similar to drained-wachu production.

8. The causes of crop loss in drained-wachu fields include fungal (e.g., Potato Late Blight, Phytoph- tera infestans, Q. soqra, Sp. la rancha), bacterial (e.g., Potato Soft Rot; Esclerotinia sp.; Q. saliasqa; Sp. pudedumbre), insect (e.g., Potato Flea Beetle, Premnotrypes sp., Q. papa quru), and other in- vertebrate (e.g., Liver Fluke, Fasciola hepatica, Q. kayutaka, Sp. alicuya) agents.

9. A 1690 report catalogued al l of i ts population as "natives" (naturales) as opposed to "Spaniards,"


who were common in nearby villages (Urteaga Villanueva 1982).

10. M y use of the concept “region of resistance” benefits from the concept of the ”region of refuge” formulated and described by Aguirre Bel- tran (1979) while differing significantly in both i ts social and spatial content. I use the term to indicate how the social and territorial dimensions of a region arose through ethnic conflict and particularly indigenous resistance. Aguirre Bel- tran, on the other hand, emphasizes a biological interpretation of territoriality and the domination of indigenous peoples. Secondly, he uses the concept to refer to larger areas than Colque- pata District, sometimes a state or department but more frequently a province.

11. Potato prices varied more in highland markets than coastal ones for at least two reasons. First, highland regions differed from their coastal counterparts in not receiving much year-round production from valleys on the coast. Secondly, the demand curve of highland consumers, with less purchasing power than those on the coast, was correspondingly less elastic (G. Scott 1986).

12. The most important improved varieties at that time (known as mantaro and renacimiento) be- longed to 5. tuberosum subsp. tuberosum, the one potato taxon that includes all “improved,” or scientifically bred, lines. The Green Revolution package for potato production was rapidly in- corporated into Andean production-albeit at an uneven rate socially and geographically.

13. From the Papa Llacta portion of the Cordillera Vilcanota, Sinchez Farfan (1983) describes a field layout similar to the drained-wachu pattern of Colquepata District. Other ethnographic ac- counts of small areas of extant wetland cultivation in the Andes indicate field designs that differ significantly from the drained-wachu one (e.g., Flores and Paz 1983).

14. Neighboring districts such as Paucartambo, Chal- labamba, and San Salvador, on the other hand, contained numerous non-Quechua village elites who controlled commercially restrictive webs of clientage (Fonseca and Mayer 1988). Recognizing the prominence of Quechua inhabitants who maintain dual residences in and outside of the village of Colquepata, residents of other Paucar- tambo villages describe it as a “peasant town” (pueblo campesino).

15. By locating subsistence production in environments less risky than those used for commercial production, the household-economic strategies of drained-wachu producers in Colquepata Dis- trict resemble those of most peasant smallholders (Brush 1987, 33).

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Submitted 70/89; accepted 77/90.

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